Accord Reached on Key Reauthorization Items

WASHINGTON--The omnibus reauthorization bill completed last week by
a House-Senate conference panel preserves controversial provisions
requiring school districts to work with state officials to improve
failing Chapter 1 programs, but limits the intervention power available
to states.

The "program improvement'' provisions, which some educators feared
could lead to state takeovers of schools, were among the last issues to
be resolved by the conference committee. Sponsors of the omnibus bill,
HR 5, plan to seek final approval by the House and Senate after the
Easter recess.

Other key compromises reached last week would limit the proposed
expansion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and adopt
the formula for Chapter 1 concentration grants considered more
favorable to rural areas.

Program-improvement requirements for the compensatory-education
program had emerged as the most important conference issue for several
education groups.

At stake was language in the Senate proposal that would have allowed
state agencies to take "appropriate corrective action'' when schools
had "substantially failed'' over two years to improve the achievement
of Chapter 1 students.

Organizations representing teachers, administrators, and school
boards argued that this would allow almost unlimited intrusion by state
agencies into local affairs. But the Council of Chief State School
Officers and civil-rights groups said states must have intervention
power if inadequate programs are to improve.

The compromise worked out last week requires school districts to
work with state agencies on plans to improve failing programs and
requires states to provide technical assistance.

But the provision also specifies that no plan can be implemented
without district approval. And it expressly states that the law does
not "give the state any authority concerning the educational program of
a local educational agency that does not otherwise exist under state
law.''

The compromise also allots to states 0.25 percent of Chapter 1 funds
for program-improvement activities through 1991, and twice that
percentage for each succeeding year. The Senate bill had set aside
double those levels for program improvement.

On the other Chapter 1 issue, Senate conferees agreed to the House
formula for concentration grants, funds designed to flow to districts
with especially dense concentrations of poor students.

House conferees repeatedly argued that appropriators would refuse to
fund the Senate formula, which would generally have favored urban
districts.

But the agreement came at the very end of last week's meeting, after
House conferees said acquiescence on this point was a prerequisite for
their acceptance of a $4 million program for the disabled specifically
targeted for Utah--the home state of Orrin G. Hatch, ranking Republican
on the Senate education panel.

Separate Statistics Center

Controversy over NAEP, an annual national testing program known as
"the nation's report card,'' was also resolved with a compromise.

Under the conference agreement, NAEP would not immediately expand
its data collection to allow state-by-state comparisons, as Senate
conferees proposed, but would instead perform on an experimental basis
for several years state-specific assessments of mathematics and reading
skills at specific grade levels.

A proposal to expand the subject areas assessed was dropped, but a
one-year experiment testing students' knowledge of history and
geography was included.

The agreement would also upgrade the status of the Education
Department's Center for Education Statistics from a section within the
office of educational research and improvement to a separate branch.
That had been a proposal in the House bill.

The new office would be headed by a Presidentially appointed
commissioner, and would have its own legislative authorization and its
own line-item in the department's budget. The current C.E.S. director,
Emerson J. Elliott, would be guaranteed the new position for four
years.

Other Agreements

Other conference agreements would:

Provide stopgap funding to each of two universities fighting over
a 5-year, $30-million grant to run the Education Department's
National Center for Vocational Research.

The department awarded the grant to a consortium headed by the
University of California at Berkeley. But Ohio State University, which
has run the center for 10 years, successfully challenged the award
process in federal court.

Although department officials plan an appeal, HR 5 would provide
each center with $2 million to fund activities through December.
Senator Howard Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, sought a provision
designating Ohio State as the interim center.

Adopt a proposal by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of
Massachusetts, for a $25-million program to fund child-development
centers providing a variety of social services to disadvantaged
preschool-age children and their parents.

The agreement provides that the program will not be funded unless
the Head Start program first receives 104-percent funding increases for
two years.

At the conferees' last meeting, Representative William F. Goodling,
Democrat of Pennsylvania, had demanded that funding for Mr. Kennedy's
plan be contingent on funding for Even Start, a new program that would
aid educational initiatives for preschoolers and parents through
Chapter 1.

Increase the funding ceiling for the magnet-schools program from
$75 million to $165 million, and allow school districts not under a
desegregation order to participate only in a sharply limited,
separate program.

Senate conferees had pushed for a new initiative under the
magnet-schools program to aid such districts. Their House counterparts,
however, argued that the new funding could be used to support
segregated schools and that any additional money should go to schools
that are now eligible but unfunded.

They maintained that the magnet-schools program should remain true
to its original purpose--to aid schools burdened by federal court
orders.

House conferees accepted the Senate proposal as an entirely
separate, $35-million program, which can be funded only if the full
$165 million is appropriated for the original magnet-schools
program.

The agreement also limits eligibility to districts whose enrollments
are at least 65 percent minority; requires that resulting magnet
schools be at least 50 percent minority; and mandates that eligible
plans must foster desegregation.

An agreement ratified by conferees in a previous meeting also
requires that the Education Department give districts that have not
received magnet-schools grants priority for funds above the current
$75-million appropriation. The provision was prompted by widespread
complaints from districts turned down in last year's competition.

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